Latest MTA Campaign Takes Aim at ‘Showtime’ Pole-Dancers

January 13, 2015

Anyone who frequents the L train between First Avenue and Bedford Avenue is familiar with these chants from buskers, known for breakdancing, splitting, and working poles in ways that should be impossible in crammed subway cars. Now the MTA is cracking down on subway pole-dancing with a new ad tut-tutting, “Poles Are For Your Safety, Not Your Latest Routine.”

The ad is part of the MTA’s new campaign, “Courtesy Counts, Manners Make a Better Ride,” targeting uncouth behavior on trains and buses, such as the notorious manspreading, “polehogging,” grooming, eating, and many more. Split between “Do’s” and “No no’s,” the twelve placards will serve as rider etiquette, reminding commuters that “common courtesies go a long way towards making anyone’s trip a bit more enjoyable,” explained MTA spokesman Kevin Ortiz.

In 2014, the NYPD cracked down on subway dancers, and Ortiz says pole-dancing in subway cars has been a problem for the MTA. “We have received complaints,” he said, but he quickly added that the ad is for everyone, including regular riders goofing around.

The MTA began installing the ads in 2,600 subways cars on January 9. Plans are under way to possibly extend the campaign into buses’ and subways’ car announcements. Here are some other admonitions of note:

"More than any other contemporary African-American athlete, his ability to thrive in the pressure cooker of corporate America, while never making any embarrass­ing 'I’m not black, I’m universal' comments or selling his soul rather than just his visage, makes him a role model"

“Though his work for human rights is unassailable, the books grow worse and worse, the tales of his derring-do more and more farfetched. Finally, without at all forgiving him his lies, one feels sorry for Kosinski.”